The Heroic Kitchen: Bourdain in Venice

An understated episode for understated times, it seems, but I quite enjoyed this mellow, meandering journey through Venice's winding canals. Unlike last week's taco and Mexican breakfast extravaganza, I can't say that this trip to Venice made me particularly hungry. (Though I've learned that it's much better to watch the show having eaten already, much like how you shouldn't go to the grocery store without lunch.)

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

It's obvious that only Anthony Bourdain could do a show on Venice and somehow work in references to Kraftwerk, Japanese bondage, opium, chlamydia and Thomas Mann. Imagine that. Yet my favorite quote of the episode came from the grandmother who prepared the lunch in the garden. What a setting, almost a cliche of leisurely Italian midday meal; like Bourdain, I saw that scene as an ideal of the good life, one of those rare moments when we truly understand how lucky we are to be alive. Yet la nonna said that her secret is that she kills the onions, cooking them until they die. Simple ingredients sacrificing their lives for our pleasure.

Most Popular

I was charmed the dapper Venetian restaurateur, Cesare (and his charming motorboat, too), who goes to the Sant'Erasmo garden to pluck his ingredients straight from the vine. And since every episode has to have some sort of manly man activity, the time spent at the industrial shipping docks was actually pretty interesting, revealing a vital side of Venice that no tourist would ever see.

I've been to Venice only once, in 1995, and had one of the most incredible nights of my life. Walking down the street, lost and looking for somewhere to have dinner, my backpacker friend and I met a group of artists and got caught up in their impromptu dinner plans (I still remember that I had an artichoke lasagna). Hours later, at something like 3am, after lots of drunken wandering and visits to some Count's private palace, I was drinking wine on the Rialto bridge having one of those lucky moments. So terrifcally cheesy, right? Venice just does that to you.